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Sunday, July 19, 2015

France takes history route to link up with Sikhs

Girja Shankar Kaura

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 18

India and France share long-standing strategic and diplomatic ties, which the latter now wants to make stronger by going beyond these parameters and moving towards cultural relationship by connecting dots from the past and shared history.

France will in September 2016 commemorate historic ties it has had with Punjab by unveiling a statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh along with a statue of General Jean-François Allard, who served as the military adviser to the king of Punjab from 1822 till his death in 1839 while defending Punjab on an official assignment.

Allard was among the battery of Frenchmen serving in the army of the Maharaja and rose to become the key military adviser to the king, in the process helping him modernise his army to take on the British.

Gen Allard took major part in the creation and training of the Fauj-i-khas, the “special” or “royal” brigade of the Maharaja. Tropezian Jean-François Allard, an officer in the Napoleon’s army, was exiled in India in 1822, but his military knowledge made him the chief commander of the troops of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.